Breaking news.

Our project in Treluswell has started with a grant from Tesco Groundwaorks and work on our new conservation and breeding site has started this year

Saving Cornish Bees-

A project to preserve and protect native bees through a program of bee breeding, natural selection and education.

In December 2016 Cormac kindly helped the new apiary project by surfacing a car park area to make it accessable and allow space for a workshop and visitor parking.

The Cornish Bee Project.

Bob Black is a local beekeeper who works with other local beekeepers to sustain the population of native black bees and who hope to help them develop and maintain their natural resistance to mites and diseases through a careful and sustainable program of breeding and management.
On the sites in West Cornwall bees will be introduced and managed that will be treated with recognised, friendly and alternative methods of mite control and disease treatment. (Largely based on self grooming and Essential oils, Thyme based remedies and plant extracts, proven to be efficacious).
The project will work closely with other local beekeepers and the Cornwall Bee Improvement Programme and is looking at the use of ecological, non chemical disease and mite control. The native Cornish bee is proving significant in the fight against the decline of bee populations in the UK.

The project is keen to conserve and protect the native population of bees and raise awareness of the positive atributes and outcomes of working with the Cornish variant of AMM bees in colaboration with all the groups and individual beekeepers sharing this vision.
The project also aims eventually to set up a workshop to offer employment opportunities to young people with learning difficulties on a small scale, producing polishes and cosmetics based on beeswax and honey. The project is a not for profit enterprise allowing moneys generated to benefit its ecological, educational, conservation and social enterprise projects.
We will soon be able to offer honey produced on sites from bees foraging the flora in the immediate area .
For further information on the project and bee improvement in Cornwall follow our links and contact: info@cornishbees.com

The Duchy of Cornwall is supporting a project to save the Cornish remnants of the native Black Honey Bee.
At one time the Black Honey Bee was the only sub-species to be found in Cornwall. However, the combined impact of Isle of Wight disease in the 1920s and an increasing reliance on Southern European varieties of bee has led to the gene pool being diluted to the point where a relatively pure Black Bee now represents as little as one per cent of the British bee population, which is itself declining at an alarming rate.